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giving barley soup a chance
21 Feb 2019 04:07 pmWe made this delicious bean and barley soup last night and I just had some for lunch too. It's so good!
What, you may ask, is significantly different from any other soup with a tomato-thickened broth and a combination of vegetables, legumes and grains in it?
It's not hugely different, but the foundation of a fairly large quantity of sauteed diced onion and fennel bulb is probably it. They pair very well together, and when browned get a bit stronger, and that aroma underlies the crushed tomatoes, beans, spinach, and parmesan which come later. (OTOH, this means it also can't be made entirely out of canned and frozen stuff, but fennel and onions are cheap and quick to sautee; dicing them is actually the fiddly part.)
We made it with chickpeas, as cannellini beans aren't popular here, and with plain crushed canned tomatoes - I've never had the privilege of tasting the fire-roasted ones, but I assume they add smokiness. I also added a bit more seasoning than it called for, because a few teaspoons of dried basil seemed parsimonious for such a large quantity of liquid.
What, you may ask, is significantly different from any other soup with a tomato-thickened broth and a combination of vegetables, legumes and grains in it?
It's not hugely different, but the foundation of a fairly large quantity of sauteed diced onion and fennel bulb is probably it. They pair very well together, and when browned get a bit stronger, and that aroma underlies the crushed tomatoes, beans, spinach, and parmesan which come later. (OTOH, this means it also can't be made entirely out of canned and frozen stuff, but fennel and onions are cheap and quick to sautee; dicing them is actually the fiddly part.)
We made it with chickpeas, as cannellini beans aren't popular here, and with plain crushed canned tomatoes - I've never had the privilege of tasting the fire-roasted ones, but I assume they add smokiness. I also added a bit more seasoning than it called for, because a few teaspoons of dried basil seemed parsimonious for such a large quantity of liquid.
